Compact Magneto-Electric Dipole Antenna With Low-Profile for LTE Femtocell Base Stations

By combining a horizontal planar dipole and a vertically oriented folded shorted patch antenna, a new compact magneto-electric dipole antenna with low-profile for long-term evolution femtocell base stations is presented. The antenna is excited by a stair-shaped feeding strip that is designed to improve the impedance matching. The resulting overall antenna size is 59 x 50 x 15 mm(3), and the antenna has an impedance bandwidth of 83.7% for SWR <= 1.5 from 1.53 to 3.73 GHz. The height of the antenna is only 0.132 lambda (where lambda is the free-space wavelength at the center frequency). Stable radiation pattern with low cross polarization at both planes and an antenna gain ranging from 4.5 to 6.7 dBi are obtained within the operating frequency band.